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To realize that you have not got something and that you need it, this is real asking.
Nor do we think that many of our insoluble difficulties, perplexities, and unanswered questions necessarily exist because of the kind of consciousness we naturally possess, and that a new degree of consciousness would either cause our awareness of them to disappear or bring about an entirely new relation to them.
Truth is not something lying in time, in the future, but is something here, now, only above us, above our present consciousness.
In the presence of greater meaning all lesser meanings that fill our ordinary mind full to the brim, shrink to their true proportions, and cease to steal from us. For in the presence of greater meaning we are redeemed from everything small and trivial and absurd.
All insight, all revelation, all illumination, all love, all that is genuine, all that is real, lies in now — and in the attempt to find now we approach the inner precincts, the holiest part of life. For in time all things are seeking completion, but in now all things are complete.
When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that is love. And between these two, my life turns.
The world is like a sheet of paper on which something is typed. The reading and the meaning will vary with the reader, but the paper is the common factor, always present, rarely perceived. When the ribbon is removed, typing leaves no trace on the paper. So is my mind — the impressions keep on coming, but no trace is left.
When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who claims to know what is good for others is dangerous.
The wall of the Paradise in which Thou, Lord, dwellest, is built of contradictories, nor is there any way to enter but for one who has overcome the highest Spirit of Reason who guards its gate.
The root of all moral obligation is the obligation to become capable of morality.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.
That man by retiring from all externals and withdrawing into himself in the centre of his own unity becometh most like unto God.
The great Architect of the universe conceived and produced a being endowed with both natures, the visible and the invisible. God created the human being, bringing its body forth from the pre-existing matter which he animated with his own Spirit… Thus in some way a new universe was born, small and great at one and the same time. God set this “hybrid” worshipper on earth to contemplate the visible world, and to be initiated into the invisible; to reign over earth’s creatures, and to obey orders from on high. He created a being at once earthly and heavenly, insecure and immortal, visible and invisible, halfway between greatness and nothingness, flesh and spirit at the same time… an animal en route to another native land, and, most mysterious of all, made to resemble God by simple submission to the Divine will.
If men could see their true position and could understand all the horror of it, they would be unable to remain where they are even for one second. They would begin to seek a way out and they would quickly find it, because there is a way out, but men fail to see it simply because they are hypnotized. Kundalini is the force that keeps them in a hypnotic state. “To awaken” for man means to be “dehypnotized.”
Awakening begins when a man realizes that he is going nowhere and does not know where to go.
I had come to the conclusion a long time ago that there was no escape from the labyrinth of contradictions in which we live except by an entirely new road, unlike anything hitherto known or used by us.
If he carries out all these rules while he observes himself, a man will record a whole series of very important aspects of his being. To begin with, he will record with unmistakable clearness the fact that his actions, thoughts, feelings, and words are the result of external influences and that nothing comes from himself. He will understand and see that he is in fact an automaton acting under the influences of external stimuli. He will feel his complete mechanicalness. Everything “happens,” he cannot “do” anything. He is a machine controlled by accidental shocks from outside. Each shock calls to the surface one of his “I’s.” A new shock and that ‘I’ disappears and a different one takes its place. Another small change in the environment and again there is a new ‘I.’
There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the Gospels, for instance? “Awake,” “watch,” “sleep not.” Christ’s disciples even slept when he was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane for the last time. It is all there.
Another thing that people must sacrifice is their suffering. It is very difficult also to sacrifice one’s suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering. Man is made in such a way that he is never so much attached to anything as he is to his suffering. And it is necessary to be free from suffering. No one who is not free from suffering, who has not sacrificed his suffering, can work. Later on a great deal must be said about suffering. Nothing can be attained without suffering, but at the same time one must begin by sacrificing suffering. Now, decipher what this means.
